Deus Ex Human Revolution: The Missing Link Review

The first piece of DLC for Human Revolution delivers a substantial and exciting slice of action.

Despite first appearances, Deus Ex: Human Revolution turned out to be an elegant game when it came to translating choice into gameplay. Where the opening hours suggest a simple shoot-or-sneak dichotomy, the reality of most people's playthroughs will have been a mix of vent-crawling, emergency takedowns, gratuitous violence and building fortresses of crates to hide yourself from security cameras and patrolling guards whilst hacking into someone's email.

The Missing Link embraces this variety of play, rewarding even the most esoteric of augments. If you've ever fancied dropping some Praxis points on immunity to poison gas or electrified floors, you'll find use for that here. This downloadable mission can be accessed at any time during your playthrough from the main menu, entirely separate from the main game, and you may well find yourself relying on a playstyle that's quite different from what you're accustomed to.

The mission starts off on a cargo boat registered to the mysterious and most definitely evil Belltower Security corporation, an organisation at the heart of the main game's story. It fills in a gap in Human Revolution's story, detailing what happens to Adam Jensen on his journey from Heng Sha to Singapore. Discovered as a stowaway, Jensen is stripped, beaten and restrained – your first task is to get your stuff back. You start with nothing – no augments, no equipment – and get to start from scratch, rebuilding Jensen however you like. After that, you have to escape the ship that has become your prison.

As it turns out, though, that's only the start. The boat is on its way to a secret Belltower offshore facility, and it's here that the tension ramps up and the plot takes ahold of you. Finding out what's really going on at this supposed research lab is the hook that keeps you glued to The Missing Link throughout its four to five hour duration (six if you really take your time). There's a small selection of side quests, too, each of delivers its own small but tangible benefits that help you through the main mission.

Because it's set in such cramped environments, The Missing Link can feel a bit claustrophobic. It's a shame that you spend the entire time trapped in corridors, especially as Deus Ex has such a talent for larger, urban settings. You're very clearly funnelled towards certain courses of action, most of which involve stealth and hacking. Woe betide you if you've pumped the majority of your Praxis points into combat alone – you'll be forced to punch and shoot your way through The Missing Link without finesse, setting off laser traps and alarms left, right and centre. For sneaky types, though, this is an ideal environment. If anything, there are even more vents here than in the rest of Deus Ex's universe, and you'll be very grateful for strong hacking abilities if you want to see every inch of the ship without murdering every guard on board.

A more unfortunate side-effect of the setting is that there's rather a lot of repetition - running back through areas you've already successfully negotiated two or three times before isn't fun, especially when it's so easy to set off alarms. This is a challenging campaign designed to test your adaptability, and you'll die more than a few times. The loading times on the console versions are interminable, and there are also protracted bio-scan sequences between areas that slow down the pace. It's worth it for the plot, though; the tension builds towards a thrilling climax, forcing you into a difficult moral decision that's up there with anything the main game offers.

Best of all, though, The Missing Link rights the wrongs done to us by Human Revolution's boss battles, ending with a brilliant boss encounter that lets you put all of your skills and cunning to use. It's a tantalising glimpse at how good these fights could have been in the main story, if we hadn't been forced into face-to-face confrontations that felt totally antithetical to the rest of the game.

The Verdict

It&#Array;s great to have an opportunity to revisit Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and The Missing Link is a substantial, tense and exciting piece of downloadable content that&#Array;s far more than just filler. It presents a stiff challenge and a great sub-plot alongside the opportunity to experiment with a different playstyle, branching out from what you may have done before. The repetition and the rather light runtime prevent it from being an essential purchase, but there&#Array;s still a lot to love here, especially for experienced players.